CS2... or not

[BillSchwab]

Hey All,

Seeing Bjorke's ChartThrob is making me re-examine whether I want to upgrade from CS to CS2 or not. What are your general thoughts on improvements in CS2 that would be of benefit over CS? Personally I am not interested in tools that extrude buildings and fold images such as the demo shows me. Is there more to it than that?

thanks in advance.

Bill

 

[Greg_E]

It takes a lot of CPU and memory to run fast. Almost painful on my old laptop, but PS7 runs great on that machine. Otherwise I can't help much.

 

[clay]

Bill, the biggest difference in the way I work is the new Adobe Bridge application, which is sort of the launching pad into all their other apps. It is more sophisticated than the old file browser thingie, but has a learning curve involved to get up to speed. I am still pretty low on that particular curve. Most of the other additions are pretty benign or transparent to the average user. two cents worth

 

[Joe Lipka]

What he said. Bridge is a very good tool when you use it with other applications in the adobe creative suite. Part browser, part "light table", part data manager, and file manager it shines when you are using as part of the entire creative suite.

It's a good thing for me when I am putting together portfolios on my website or (gasp) creating word and text art for digital output.

As for CS2, I think the advantage is a good built in RAW processor and some improved sharpening tools which are a big improvement over PS7.

 

[BillSchwab]

Thanks Greg, Clay and Joe! Still considering downloading the UG. Judging from what you have both said, perhaps the time has come.

Bill

 

[Joe Lipka]

One other suggestion. Adobe allows a 30 day free trial. If your internet connection is high speed, it doesn't take that long to do. You get 30 days to play and then decide.

Now, if you decide that CS2 is for you, then you should enroll in your local community college's photoshop course. The courses are usually fairly cheap, but the real point is that you become an "official student." Being an "official student" means that you can buy CS2 at the bookstore or on the web with a student discount. That's the real money saver.

 

[BillSchwab]

One other suggestion.

Thanks Joe, I saw the trial download and will give it a try later today. As for being a student again, it's a thought. Aren't we all students anyway???

Thanks again,

Bill

 

[Greg_E]

Educational software normally comes with a clause in the license... You are not allowed to use it for commercial purpose! So if photography is you business, and you want to be completely legal, you should not use the discounted software.

With the Adobe products, there aren't any features that are lacking now, they used to make special versions for education that had a few things lacking, now it's just a different number and everything works.

 

[naturephoto1]

Thanks Joe, I saw the trial download and will give it a try later today. As for being a student again, it's a thought. Aren't we all students anyway???

Thanks again,

Bill

Hi Bill,

If you have a valid registered earlier copy of Photoshop you can get an upgrade to Photoshop CS2 for perhaps $150 to $170? If you do, Adobe will provide you with the info to unlock and use the program. That is and has been true since I believe the beginning. I originally had Photoshop 4 which I have upgraded at different times. Now I have CS2. Adobe keeps the registration info on file just for this purpose.

Rich

 

[BillSchwab]

If you have a valid registered earlier copy of Photoshop you can get an upgrade to Photoshop CS2 for perhaps $150 to $170?

Thanks Rich, This is the way I will go. It is 169.00 via their website. I am using the trial now and feeling as if it will be well worth it.

Thanks again everyone.

Bill

 

[nc5p]

I upgraded from 7 to CS2 for about $160 last year. It was painless, the CD install program looks on your hard disk for an earlier version and just installs. I also took the PS class at TVI (Now CNM) community college. It cost $40 for a 16 week course. They used to teach it as three short courses but rolled it into the full (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) study.

 

[Bromo33333]

I upgraded from 7 to CS2 for about $160 last year. It was painless, the CD install program looks on your hard disk for an earlier version and just installs. I also took the PS class at TVI (Now CNM) community college. It cost $40 for a 16 week course. They used to teach it as three short courses but rolled it into the full (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) study.

We have CS2 - it is a nice program - excellent and better than the old version.

 

[troutmask]

CS2 is what CS should have been in the first place as CS was not a lot better than 7 for digital photographers.
However Lightroom (which is in beta at the moment and free) is possible the best way for photographers to go with both digital capture and scanned images.
At present it does lack certain tools which I use to make B&W conversion (gradient mapping with which you can aproximate both split grade printing and burning etc.) but it is a pure photographic application rather than a graphical application as PS has become. Also it dosen't do all the stupid special effects stuff which is great.
It will need a fast machine to run on and 2Gb of RAM to make it work at any speed.

 

[Jeremy]

At present it does lack certain tools which I use to make B&W conversion (gradient mapping with which you can aproximate both split grade printing and burning etc.)

can you explain how to do this? sounds interesting

 

[troutmask]

Gradient mapping

can you explain how to do this? sounds interesting

Process you image in a RAW processor (I would reccomend Rawshooter pro, now Ligtroom, but any will do) you can make your inital conversion to B&W in RAW or use the channels in PS. At this stage I concentrate on getting the largest range of tones I can, the image will often look rather flat.
take the image in PS.
Make sur your forground is set to black and background to white.
Go to layer; New adjustment layer, gradient map. Select color GREY and Mode as Soft Light (you can also try Hard light for this)
The gradient should default to a black to white graysacle, if it doesn't change it. You can also select dither, which can be usfull if later making a contact ngative, but I don't think it makes much difference for screen viewing or ink jet printing)
In the layer palette set the opacity at whatever 100% give you the highst contrast you want. Then you can use the paintbrush tool,set as a soft brush at whatever siz and opacity you choose (I usuall go for 10 -20%) to paint in or out contrast in the apropriate places.
You can add a second map above the first in Hard light to boost contrast even further.
Keep checking the Histogram to check that you are not creating any gaps (if you are working on a 16 bit image converted from RAW you shouldn't have a problem, however if you work on a 8 bit image it will be very destructive.
Save th image with the layers intact. Flatten the image, resize to yur output size, change to LAB mode, sharpen on the ligtness channel only, change back to RGB, convert to 8 bit and then save as a PSD with a new name. For web output, go to edit, convert to profile, choose sRGB and then save as a jpeg at around 8 -9.
There are many ways to do this, this one works for me and is as non destructive as it can be. I usually print on an pson 1290 using Lyson Quad black inks and various Hanemule papers. It dosn't fool me for a second that it is a real photographic print, but it does fool many!

 

[Papa Tango]

With the exception of Bridge, I found little compelling reason to upgrade from 7 to CS2. At least, not $150 worth. As I understand, CS3 will be launching sometime in the spring, and may have some enhancements that justify the extra cost. Currently, I am evaluating Lightroom as a pre-process alternative to the Canon software...

 

[bob01721]

Okay... it's been two months since we've talked about this. Where do we stand today?

I'm still running version 7. Is there any cogent rationale for a "serious amateur" (ie., "non-professional") to upgrade to CS2? CS3? Lightroom?

 

[jd callow]

healing brush

 

[craigg]

I upgraded to CS2 from 7 some time back and as Mr Callow points out the healing brush was probably the main reason for a change for me. Having said that, the healing brush doesnt do anything more than could be done previously, it just does it quicker and easier.
If I was still on version 7 now, I would wait until CS3 is released before upgrading. After all another couple of months is not going to make a huge difference.
When CS3 comes out I will probably upgrade from CS2, but only because I am running an Intel Mac.

 

[bob01721]

Thanks.

One more question: I've heard that CS is becoming the tool of choice for graphic designers while Lightroom is better targeted to photographers. Any substance to that claim?

 

[Joe Lipka]

From my playing with Lightroom it would seem to me that if you are a "straight" photographer, light room would give you just about everything you need to make an unmanipulated image from a digital file. LR's forte is the ability to handle and organize large numbers of digital files quickly and efficiently. It also had the advantage in that its' editing does not change the original file, thus conserving disk space.

If your end product will be incorporated into some graphic, then photoshop would be the way to go.

That's just my opinion. There are others out here who may be able to improve, disprove or approve of my thoughts.

 

[bob01721]

Joe,

Yes... I'm pretty much a "straight" photographer. I'll play with USM, contrast, etc. On rare occassion, I'll dodge/burn. And in those few instances where I shoot color, I may play with that a bit.

I guess my reason for wanting to avoid CS2/3 is... I don't care much about all the other software in the suite. Graphics isn't my thing. Photography is.

BTW, I enjoyed your website. Good pics! Good humor!

 

[toyotadesigner]

Just saw this thread. If you grew up with b&w and feel comfortable with zones, just give LightZone (http://www.lightcrafts.com) a try. They offer a 30 day trial version, and if you are running Linux google for 'LightZone for Linux' - it's free and faster than the Windoze version (because Linux is faster )